a mirror, darkly
by Silver Pard
Summary: Excerpts of a 123-year love letter from Gotham to London, ongoing.


**Prompt: **Inspired by the debates regarding CBS!Sherlock and the rants that London is a character as much as it is a setting.

Gotham/London. Because nobody can deny Gotham serves the same purpose to its own world's greatest detective.

(Living Lore London strikes again: Arkham uses Matisse ITC (or Metropolitan) font. Bruce Wayne speaks in shades of grey, Batman in bold. The Joker's lines are black, green or red and in the Jokerman font because come on, _Jokerman_. Available with formatting (hopefully) intact at AO3: archiveofourown works/375685

* * *

Welcome To Gotham City, the sign says piously. Underneath, someone has added in shining purple: _We're glad you're here – for some reason people keep moving away._

It takes a particular type of mindset to move _to_ Gotham. It belongs to the kind of person who looks at a big red button with 'do not press' figuratively written all over it and presses it, the kind of person who walks into the darkest, grungiest bar and insults the mother of the biggest, meanest looking guy there.

It takes something special to move _from_ Gotham. It takes common sense. Common sense in Gotham twists upon itself to allow you to survive as best you can. Common sense is: always lock your doors, always have a weapon in your home, be quick about your business, don't ask questions, don't go out on certain days, never walk alone at night. Common sense anywhere else is: looking at the mess made by the fifth robbery that year, or reporting yet another mugging, and deciding enough is enough.

Gotham uses you, beats you, wears you down and destroys you and everyone you care for – it is the crucible in which you are tried, the anvil upon which you are tempered or broken and for no reason except it can.

To _stay_ in Gotham requires a certain tenacity, a fierce, unshakable belief: in God, perhaps, in self-sufficiency – in the Bat. The longer you stay, the more you believe, the more you feel that you have to stand firm, to show that the city has not won and broken you.

You see: you can be grounded if you can prove you're insane, but to fly a plane you must be insane in the first place, and wanting to stay on the ground is therefore proof of sanity. To live in Gotham is like that.

(Gotham: suicide by proxy.)

* * *

The city of Gotham has been in love with London since the autumn of 1888; one mention of Saucy Jack and that was _it_, it fell for London like no other city before or since.

(This is the making of Jack as Gotham imagines it, as Gotham would do it:

London reaches, steady and nowhere near slow, slips into Jack's head like water through a tunnel carved out by centuries of river flow, like walking a path marked out by a thousand different feet in defiance of a road perfectly set down.

In Jack's head is cramped, hot and damp and bloody, the way London thinks hearts must be, _flesh_ in a way London has never understood and never will.

In Jack's head, London is filthy, dirt and smog, Thames water and sewer stink and flickering gaslight. In Jack's head London looms, something vast, something heavy, suffocating, and whispers _I'll make a legend of you_ and _try and stop me_ and _Jack, Jack, Jack_.

There are puddles beneath his feet when he looks down, enough for reflection, and "Jack is not my name," he tells the man in the water, but the thing blurs, a shadow, a swirl of ink, so maybe it is.

_look at them_, whispers London, and all Jack can see are the doxies and the dollies, painted up and worn down. London whispers of (flesh) skin against skin and skirts shoved up or aside and tired moans and filthy coins passing from hand to hand, and Jack can't _stand it_.

"Out, out, out," Jack mutters, but who he's talking to he can't tell.

_legend_, croons London, Jack in his head struggling and struggling like a fly in a web. _such terrible great things you're going to do, my Jack, such Lore you are._

When Gotham thinks of London, this is the image it cherishes.)

There had been many murderers before Jack, as there would after, but in the man Jack was Lore indefinable, the envy of cities, and Gotham, two hundred and fifty-three and still Lore-less was struck by the realisation that London had just shown it the future and the shape of all it wanted to be.

There are no human words for what the appearance of the first modern serial killer did to/for Gotham. There are barely even city-words for it.

The Opening Salutation of the Gotham/London love affair: the subtle transmogrification of a prosperous port city into the City of Night.

* * *

There is much of London that Gotham can admire, once it understands what it is looking for, what it wants in all London's vast age and experience.

There is beauty in decay, in destruction, in chaos. Gotham has always thought so (or maybe it didn't, but time is a human construct and it thinks so now) and by such values as Gotham holds dear (madness-in-the-earth, madness-in-the-blood) Bedlam is the most beautiful place in London. Not what it is (now), but what it was, fifty, a hundred, five hundred years ago, the name that became the sound.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and Gotham is an eager student. It might not have the same resources available to it as long-shadowed London but it knows its own special brand of magic, studies and emulates to the best of its ability London's innate sense of Lore-that-is, Lore-that-will-be.

The first building in Gotham was its madhouse. It was not called Arkham then but the seeds of it were there, in the brick, in the mortar, in the earth, and all it took was a little blood to make them grow.

(_hUngry. I'm sO hUngry, GOthAm. WOn't yOu fEEd mE?_)

Amadeus Arkham in the second year of the new century writes that he has caught a glimpse of the other world, speaks of the house of his family as reality and himself as a ghost. His mother swallows symbols of rebirth and listens to the beating of wings beneath the bed.

(_don't let it take me!_)

Perhaps Gotham puts too much of itself in Arkham in its loneliness, in its eagerness.

_sO hUngR__y._

(Gotham City is the mother of monsters. Gotham City eats its children. Arkham is Gotham in miniature, in concentrate, eats itself alive.)

* * *

Gotham looks at the world through Arkham and sees so many things. Time is not a line, a thread, a spiderweb of choices, time is an idea of order placed upon chaos, it is madness and through its mad eye Gotham sees it all.

(These things, always: 'it means a safe place for goats! and do you know what feeds on goats?  
bats...'

**surely the _fiercest_ survivor, the _purest_ warrior... glaring, _hating_... claiming me as his _own_**

_The house is an organism, hungry for madness._

'devil is double is deuce. and joker trumps deuce.')

Living on Baker Street (past/present/future/multiversal) is something else of London that Gotham admires enormously.

The world's greatest detective is not something Gotham would have thought to want, so entranced with Jack and Bedlam and Newgate and London's dark side – but that is why London is a world city, it supposes. London knows how to use its years, how to craft legends that will be perpetuated and make it renowned.

It makes Gotham feels young and foolish but that is why London is there – to show it how it's done, that Gotham may one day do it better.

London is beautiful and grim and everything Gotham could want, but Gotham is not London and never will be, however much it wants the London of 1888, full of shadowy menace and malicious joy. The streets of Gotham will never be paved with gold, only dreams, trod flat and dark beneath a million uncaring feet.

Not for Gotham the shining tomorrow and gleaming towers of Metropolis, the glass and steel skyscrapers of Chicago or the sleepless lights of New York. Gotham is a city of neo-gothic spires and gargoyles and graveyards, alleys and asylums; the city it wants to be is the truth in the saying that civilisation ends at night.

(GiVe tHem To mE, GoThAm. iN mY waLLs aLL yOuR aRchItEcts.)

* * *

Love to London is like this:

A soldier returns from a war in a strange land, lonely and heartsick and wounded. A friend of past years greets him by name, shakes his hand and says 'I know a man who is everything you need', and introduces him to the rest of his life.

"Doctor Watson, meet Sherlock Holmes."

"The name is Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B Baker Street."

/

Love to Gotham is like this:

Outside Gotham's limits but upon Gotham-land lives a family of three. They are old blood, the finest Gotham blood, born and bred, there at the city's birth, there at the shaping of the city skyline, one day to be there at the end of everything.

They are Gotham's royalty and it loves them so very much. It wants to give them a gift.

A man, a woman and their only son cut through an alley after an outing one night...

bang  
bang

London can make legend of nothing, but Gotham knows it needs a sacrifice in the true meaning of the word, of itself, to itself, for itself. All heroes need an origin story.

* * *

_Gotham City Herald_, Tuesday, June 19X9, Vol., XXLVII,

**WAYNE DOUBLE MURDER**

**CITY'S FIRST FAMILY SLAIN BY MUGGER**

...Many citizens as well as residents of Park Row are concerned about what the death of the Waynes will mean to the city.

"There's no doubt in my mind that Gotham City was built on a powder keg," said Dr Edward Burton, a prominent psychologist and expert on urban behaviour. "When something this horrific, this random and unexpected, happens to such a prominent couple in such a safe neighborhood, the best case scenario is that the city pauses to reflect on this senseless tragedy and on their own personal safety. The worst case scenario is that tensions explode, and the city crumbles, unable to find a firm standing on the shaky ground of fear and mistrust."

(They ask themselves, looking at Bruce Wayne's dead eyes, looking at the chalk outlines on the pavement, the blood and scattered pearls, If Gotham can let that happen to the Waynes –

_And If thAt tHeRe City wAs tO wAke, yOu'd gO oUt— bAng!—jUst LiKe A cAndLe!_

if Gotham can kill its own first family just like that – what will it do to _me_?

_BANG!_

The answer they reach is exactly the one Gotham wants to hear.)

* * *

The boy (_little prince/youngest of old blood/last of the first family_) leaves Gotham after its gift.

(_no! mine_ **mine** mInE mine!)

Gotham allows it – understands, in its way. As it studies the best and worst of other cities to make itself more than them all, so does its _prince/knight/last of the first-family_ perfect himself for Gotham's sake.

The (Lore-that-will-be) idea of him waits, Arkham waits, Gotham-as-Bat waits, the whole city takes shallower and shallower breaths, counting years, counting time, waiting, waiting, waiting – making itself into a city worthy of his unwavering attention.

Gotham thinks _such Lore you are_ in the voice it imagines London to have – smoky, intense, weighted with history and blood – and feels a little less alone.

_sO vuLnErAblE sO smAll sO EaSiLy dEstrOyEd. hOw cOuld yOu lEt Him gO, hE's oUrS, whAt if hE StRays, wHat If He sTAys?_

_hE'LL gO to LONdOn, yoU knOw He wIll, GoThAm. iT'll wAnt hiM, liKe It waNted aMaDeus_

But London didn't keep Amadeus, he saw Bedlam in its newest incarnation and came home to Gotham/Arkham and is still there, in his cell, carving with his fingers a binding spell for part of Gotham that doesn't exist yet.

_He'S leFt Us hE's lEfT uS wHat maKEs You tHink hE wOn'T dO iT aGaiN-_

The boy will come home because Gotham brands its children, there is nowhere in the world one of its own can run where Gotham will not follow – always the biting question will be asked, "So – how long did you live in Gotham?"

(And when he comes home, Gotham's beloved boy, he will never leave again, never never never.)

* * *

The boy travels, the boy learns and Gotham gnaws at its guts and hollows itself out with jagged teeth - _look at me, look at me, how could you ever think of anywhere else, I need you more_.

A new/old Gotham joke: broad daylight, there's this guy being beaten up by a bunch of Maroni thugs, the works, bone-shattering stuff, and this non-Gothamite, they go 'help, police!' and a Gothamite, they grab their arm and say, 'shut the fuck up, lady – better Maroni than the cops!'

It's not funny but it's true so it gets a bitter laugh.

(this fucking city, i'd move if i could, christ, who'd want to live here

place was buried with the waynes)

Paris says _Henri Ducard is training your boy_, London says _- - is training your boy_, [Cain/Kirigi/Shiva/Tsunetomo/Zatara] _is training your boy_ and Gotham says _anything happens and I will **destroy** you_ (Arkham lends its weight, the shape of Gotham's future hisses in the dark).

London doesn't look at Gotham and says _that's the way to do it_.

* * *

"Tell me about the history of London," someone said.

"It started with me; it ends with me," a teenager said.

The boy comes home and Gotham gets a little giddy on hope until it crashes on disillusionment – all those years and the boy doesn't recognise it, thinks it takes nothing more than a man to make Gotham live/love/strong.

Gotham is not London, and its boy is not Sherlock Holmes, much as he owes him – Gotham has a love of theatricality London can't match, too young and too mad to know better.

"Tell me about the history of Gotham," nobody said.

**It starts with me; it ends with me.**

Literal truth.

How do I do it? the boy asks (Gotham), blood dripping from his fingers on to the floor of his father's study. What do I use... to make them afraid?

The window is open, the window is closed, (the omen) is old and dying, it is young and fierce, it settles on the bust of Shakespeare, it crashes to the floor –

_A Treatise on the Criminal Mind: _"Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot."

I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible.

(_I see it. And it is a bat. A BAT!_)

**I shall become a bat.**

Gotham wonders if this is what London felt with the first Ripper murder, with the shaking of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson's hands.

No wonder London is smug. But that's okay. It's got the trick of it now, _watch me, London, see what I do with your teaching, how I improve upon it._

* * *

Bats are social creatures – and what is Holmes without his Watson, without Moriarty or Lestrade or Adler or his long list of clients and enemies?

It's about balance – so Gotham lets him keep _Alfred Pennyworth_, late of London, to talk to and be comforted by and write his stories down. It takes the cop that left it years ago for Chicago (_thought you could leave me? no need to look in Arkham for insanity_) and lifts him up and casts his enemies down, puts him in a position to be of use. It takes a girl of its streets and shapes her into something dark and tempting (and never quite enough to take his attention away) and it takes his friend and divides him in two so that he can understand _Bruce Wayne_ and _Batman_, something for both.

It makes his chosen partner welcome, takes him in as one of its own, free of ties so the Bat can take him into his shadow without regret. _welcome and well met little robin - _MaKe Him beTTer Or i'LL GiVe yOu tO oNe oF MiNE, nOt-GoTHam bRaT, LeA_rn quick, little robin._

And of course, it makes its own Moriarty.

London's – the majority of Londons, anyway – is cunning and patient, a spider, and crime is a business.

Gotham loves London, but – almost sacrilegious to admit, Jack still vivid in Gotham's memory – its taste in crime these days, it's almost _dull_. The taste of it is washed out, it's just ink in Gotham's ears, nothing like the rich libation of blood in 1888.

A serial killer is rare front page news. It hurts Gotham's soul to see it.

Where _Bruce Wayne_ has family and history and weight, his Moriarty is nothing but a blank slate, wiped and rewritten over and over and over. Where Gotham's hand-crafted god is so serious, law and order and black and white and hard adherence to the One Rule, and the devil of Gotham is endless laughter and green and red and no rules whatsoever, changeable as the wind. Balance.

_that's the way to do it._

* * *

Love in Gotham is not like this:

the madman himself? He's fascinating. Arrogant, imperious, pompous. He's not safe, I know that much. I'm not going to be bored and I doubt we're going to be arguing about whose turn it is to pay the gas bill or what we're going to watch on the telly. And yeah, he is probably most likely definitely mad. But, he knows a couple of nice restaurants so he's not all bad.

or this:

"Want to see some more?"

or this:

"We can't giggle, it's a crime scene!"

or this:

"Look at us both."

or this:

"You're not hurt, Watson? For God's sake, say that you are not hurt!"

It was worth a wound - it was worth many wounds - to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

or this:

He was my best friend and I will always believe in him – The best and wisest man whom I have ever known.

Today, John will still be able to laugh at Sherlock's black mood but his eyes will be on the window or the door, looking for Lestrade and the hope of a case. He will shrug off barbed words in his direction, careless, knowing they have no intent behind them (every word Sherlock says has meaning, to John). He will chivvy Sherlock into getting up, getting dressed, going out; they'll eat in a restaurant and he'll goad him into scanning the other patrons and revealing the secrets of their shoes and shirts, hands and jewellery, and he'll be a little better on the trip home for it.

If there is a case, John will have his gun and Sherlock will give him his back, an apology, an offering, an unthinking gesture of trust. They will break into houses, laugh helplessly at an attempted bank robbery, trick confessions out of murderers and scammers, run across London fearlessly, knowing it will give them what they want.

Tomorrow it all begins again.

* * *

Love, Gotham style:

Today, if he sees Batman he will call him darling, honeycakes, my sweet.

Today he will watch Batman fly with one hand over his heart feeling it go _batman batman batman_ against his fingers, one hand curling beneath his clothes to rest gloved fingers in the groove between hip and thigh as he sways to the beat of the city, to the snap flap and sea-scream sound of a cape in the wind. He can't see anything except that dark shape against the skyline.

Today his every thought contains a teeny little bat somewhere, his every plot and plan makes a great twisted web with Batman in the middle, Batman is the centre of everything.

Today he cannot breathe for the feeling flooding his veins, humming in his bones, resting in a solid twisted lump in his throat, he wants to kill and kill and _kill_ until it _stops_. He wants to carve his name into Batman's skin, wants to kiss him wants to sink his teeth into his throat wants to make him smile.

(He asks a lot of his psychiatrists about this. They go pale and green and refuse to listen when he gives them everything they've ever wanted to hear and then they wonder why he does such things to their families the next time he gets out.)

He's never made Batman smile. The day he does he thinks his heart might give out.

He cannot imagine life without Batman, the thought is like the nothingness that sinks into his brain the moment before he dies, the moment before he comes back, but if he kills him, maybe everything will stop hurting. Like wiping out his reflection – if there's no _you_ there's no _me_ because there can't be a Joker without a Batman, and then – and then-

Then there's nothing, but nothing might not be so bad compared to the intolerable ache in his bones, because it isn't _fair_ that he should be forced to live, forced to feel this, forced to be the only one willing to admit he feels this.

He lives to make Batman hurt.

Tomorrow, if he sees Batman he will smile like he has seen the end of the world and he and Batman are left in the ashes.

Tomorrow he will watch Batman fly with one hand over his heart feeling it go _batman batman batman_ against his fingers, pumping acid, one hand curled tight into a fist in his pocket, just imagining the line snapping, the bat's wings crumpling like a piece of paper as he falls to hit the ground with a crack-splat of breaking bones and spilling guts. He is blind to everything but that dark shape against the skyline.

Tomorrow his every thought contains a teeny little bat somewhere, his every plot and plan makes a great twisted web with Batman in the middle, broken and bleeding, Batman in the centre of everything.

Tomorrow he cannot breathe for the feeling flooding his veins, humming in his bones, resting in a solid twisted lump in his throat, he wants to kill and kill and _kill_ until it _stops_. He wants to carve his name into Batman's skin, wants to hurt him wants to destroy him wants to make him _scream_.

(He asks a lot of his psychiatrists about this. They go pale and green and refuse to listen when he gives them everything they've ever wanted to hear and then they wonder why he does such things to their families the next time he gets out.)

He makes Batsy scream all the time, mostly rage but sometimes pain, and the day he doesn't he thinks he might just lay down and die.

He cannot imagine existence without Batman, the thought is like the nothingness that sinks into his brain the moment before he dies, the moment before he comes back, but if he kills him, maybe everything will stop hurting. Like wiping out his reflection – if there's no _you_ there's no _me_ because there can't be a Joker without a Batman, and then – and then-

Then there's nothing, but nothing might not be so bad compared to the intolerable ache in his bones, because it isn't _fair_ that he should live, live like this – because deep deep down he knows himself like the oracle's command, knows that pain has made him ill, has twisted him beyond repair – and it isn't fair that Batman won't let him _end_.

He lives to make Batman hurt.

* * *

"Tell me about (the history/present/future of) Gotham."

**I've _always_ been in Gotham.**

**I _am_ Gotham.**

* * *

(_I had a dream,_ Gotham says. _you were it._)


End file.
